Deployed alongside the Russians on the Ukrainian front, wounded in combat then taken prisoner, the two North Korean soldiers captive in Ukraine now dream of a “new life” in South Korea. A wish that they expressed in a letter, for the first time in their own words. “Thanks to the support of the South Korean people, new dreams and new aspirations have begun to take root,” they explain in this text, dated at the end of October and addressed to an NGO in Seoul which sent it to AFP on Wednesday. In early November, Gyeore-eol Nation United, a defector aid group, had already reported that these soldiers wanted to defect to South Korea. This time, however, they express themselves directly in a writing signed with their names, which are kept secret to protect them.
The two men, prisoners since January after being wounded on the battlefield, thank those who came to their aid by “encouraging” them and “seeing this situation not as a tragedy, but as the start of a new life”. “We firmly believe that we are never alone and consider South Koreans as our own parents and brothers and sisters, and we decided to find their embrace,” the soldiers added.
South or North, all Koreans are considered full citizens of South Korea under the Constitution. Even if the two Koreas are technically still at war, their conflict having ended in 1953 with an armistice and not a peace treaty. The captive North Koreans handed over their letters during the filming of an interview, co-organized by Gyeore-eol Nation United, for a documentary in late October, at a location whose location is not known. “The two asked the producer, at the end of the interview, to take them to the South,” Jang Se-yul, director of Gyeore-eol Nation United, told AFP at the time. “They begged the interviewer to promise that she would come back for them,” continued Jang Se-yul, who himself fled North Korea in the 2000s. The video of this interview is not yet available, but should be published in January, according to Jang Se-yul.
“Death sentence”
The North has actively participated in Moscow’s war effort since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, providing its ally with equipment and, according to South Korean intelligence, some 10,000 troops. Pyongyang’s soldiers were notably deployed in the Russian region of Kursk, partially occupied by Ukrainian forces between August 2024 and spring 2025.
In mid-December, Pyongyang’s official agency reported the death of nine soldiers from a North Korean military engineering unit which had been deployed to clear mines in the Kursk region. But in total, according to South Korean estimates, at least 600 North Korean soldiers died and thousands were injured. Seoul intelligence further indicated that Pyongyang soldiers were ordered to commit suicide in order to avoid capture.
South Korean parliamentarian Yu Yong-weon, who visited the prisoners in Ukraine in February, said the two soldiers saw comrades blowing themselves up with grenades. Sending them back to North Korea would therefore be like “a death sentence,” he warned. In Seoul, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs called on Ukraine not to “forcibly repatriate North Korean prisoners of war”, and asked that their desire to join the South be respected.
Pyongyang only admitted sending troops to Russia in April, and conceded that some had died. Analysts believe the North receives financial aid, military technology and deliveries of food and energy from Russia in exchange for its support.
